


memory

by kalypsobean



Category: Kamen Rider Drive
Genre: Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:43:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heart took care of Chase when he was new, but it's not the same when Kiriko pieces him back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Estirose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/gifts).



Chase's first memory is of Heart. Heart takes care of him; keeps him close and shows him how things work, rather than telling him one thing and expecting him to know the rest. It never sits quite right, being a Roidmude, but to Heart, it doesn't seem to matter, as if it's something that Heart went through, when he was new, and he knows there's a point where it becomes enough.

He doesn't know what a family is, but when he hears the word, his brain, such as it is, ties it to Heart. Heart is the one to help him heal when he comes back hurt, with gentle touches that seem almost impossible, coming from the same Heart who can give orders and pull cores from human bodies with an almost dispassionate air. Heart listens to him, when he has something to say, even when Brain laughs it off. Brain always thinks he's better; Heart always hears everything, and then decides. Sometimes it's like Heart already knew what would happen, but let Chase have his say so that he would feel... this, whatever it is. Like he has a place that's bigger than being the one sent out with a task and an aim, as if he has a choice.

He doesn't know where else he would go.

He still doesn't understand Heart, even when he knows all that he's allowed to know. Heart would sacrifice even the final evolution for the rest of them to be safe, not hunted down and crushed. That, he can reconcile with the gentleness, even though it's just when they're alone, in the dark hole that they call home. The Heart who sets out against the Kamen Rider for no other reason than to fight doesn't sit evenly next to the Heart who cleaned the blood from his human body and who treats Medic as if she might break if he were harsh with her, and looks up at her as if he understands what love is. That Heart isn't the one who gives Brain endless chances, even when it seems impossible to keep on wishing, because he knows one day Brain will mean everything to him.

Chase can't even be jealous of them, because love was always in Heart, even if the small piece of it that was given to him was so easily pushed aside.

 

It's different with Kiriko.

It would be different even if he didn't have memories of her, before he knew what memories were, before he understood that he had known her before he was this. It's more than the feeling of sameness he has when she's in the same room; it doesn't take long for him to recognise her as more than the girl in the images that short-circuit his mind and leave him frozen and confused, slightly apart from time. The shift cars love her; they beep and hum and run to her when she visits, and she has to set them back to their stations as if it's something she's done a thousand times before. Mad Doctor fusses over the worst of his injuries; it's not gentle like Heart, because as it patches him up it seems to wake something in him, something that wants to reach out and take the sadness from Kiriko so that she doesn't have to keep leaving. It's as if it heals more than just the damage from the fight, and he can't sort out what was there before and what's new, or whether it was just hidden away.

Kiriko talks to him, even when he can't look at her because she is too beautiful for his eyes, and by the time his legs will hold him, it's as if he's known her longer than he knew Heart, longer than everyone. It's easy to tell that she's Banno's daughter, even if the shift cars weren't clue enough; she moves in this world easily, and he suspects that if given the same chances, she would look for endless redemption.

She is not unlike Heart.

Yet, she is more than Heart, for in the way she talks there is a warmth that Heart always lacked; she has love and doesn't have to have a reason for it. It's in the way she worries for her brother and in the way she cares for him, when Mad Doctor can no longer be absent and it falls to her to feed him, to change the bandages and clean the last of the dirt from his skin. She, too, is not gentle, but her touch doesn't hurt him. It is sure and strong and swift, as if she has done it a thousand times before, though he doesn't know when she would have had the time. 

He appreciates, though he's not sure how to show it, that she's taken some of that time for him when he hardly deserved it, when he's done nothing but hurt her.

 

She's why he stays; though he couldn't stay in that room anymore, so still and quiet and silent. It feels small when she's not there, and the time she spends with him starts to feel like not enough, that he could keep her with him more and more until she lost that spark that made him want to be near her, the same way Brain had lost part of himself to Heart. She needs to be out in the world. The only way he knows to pay her back is to let her go, to watch over her and protect her. It's the only thing he really knows how to do, and now that the Roidmudes don't need him, there is no reason that he cannot. 

 

She teaches him to love; she gives him back his memories, before Heart, and he can only give her this one thing - he can make sure she lives on, once his body wears out, once the Kamen Rider is no longer needed. He can give her the space to heal herself, since he doesn't know how to do that for her.

He can give her the world.

It doesn't feel like enough, but it's all he has to give her, after she showed it to him.


End file.
